In-Game Reporting Feature

Good Game, Bad Behavior

In a perfect universe, noble competitors take opposing sides of a contest and compete honorably, fairly and kindly and encourage one another to better play at the end of a hard fought match.

When we’re not dreaming, though, the real world of competition doesn’t always bring out the best in us. We’re very aware that in the world of internet anonymity and the high-passion atmosphere of competition, players will often use unfair methods to gain competitive advantage. Real players also react badly to things they find unfavorable in the game, including losing, bad team experiences, or technical issues with the game itself.

Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) those behaviors have appeared within the Battleborn community. Some of those behaviors have gotten bad enough that we need to take some actions to get our community back on course. Here’s where we need your help!

With the big patch on July 21, a new Reporting tool will be available to players. Using in-game reporting, you will be able to flag players for certain behaviors we don’t want in our community.

When and What to Report

You can sum up our code of conduct in a fairly straightforward statement: help all other players have a fair and fun experience, even during competitive matches. Specifically, don’t go out of your way to give yourself unfair advantage. Also, do not go out of your way to insult or belittle teammates or opponents. Let’s break that down a bit.

There are three things you will be able to report a player for during a match:

Cheating

We define Cheating as the use of any outside-of-the-game tool to gain player advantages. This includes (but is not limited to) aim-botting, move speed hacking, player tracking, or any attempt to alter data on your account or our servers.

Let’s be very clear: Cheating is absolutely not tolerated and will be dealt with harshly.

What we expect: Don’t cheat. Don’t use software outside of the game or scripts or macros to gain unfair advantage or advancement.

If you suspect a player of cheating, report them. Bear in mind that not all people who seem to be cheating actually are. Not all good Marquis players are aim-botting. Some of them actually can crit you multiple times in a row. If you are suspicious, though, report them. We will evaluate it.

Frequently Idle

We’ve heard from the community (and we have seen in games we have played) that AFKers (Away from Keyboard players) can also be a problem. In Story missions, an AFK player can impede progress on a mission by not advancing through a checkpoint that requires all players to be present. In Competitive, an AFK player means you’re effectively playing a 4 vs 5 game, and those are very hard games to win if team skills are close.

What we expect: If you are matched with a team, stay with that team until the conclusion of the match or mission you are playing. Don’t drop. Don’t go AFK. Play actively until match completion (win, loss, or surrender). If you don’t have time, don’t match with other players.

Abusive Behavior/Language

Chat is a blessing and a curse. Battleborn offers both text and voice chat in-game, and those are important tools for coordinating with teammates to take down story-mission bosses or to coordinate strategy and tactics in competitive missions. Unfortunately, many players also use these tools to insult or degrade other players.

We understand passions get high, especially when the challenges are hard and rewards are at stake. However, it’s not okay to verbally abuse players for any reason.

What we expect: Do not use chat to insult, belittle, or verbally abuse other players. If you’re upset, find other players to play with. Don’t take out your frustration by telling teammates “you suck”. And while it should go without saying, we’ll say it here: threats, racism, or sexually abusive language is inappropriate for the game and will not be tolerated.

How the Reporting feature works

Reporting in Battleborn is very simple: while in a game, use the Scoreboard to highlight a player’s name and choose the type of behavior you wish to report for that player.

Step-by-step:

1.While in any Campaign or Competitive game with other players, open the Scoreboard.

2.Using the mouse, up and down arrow keys, or the right control stick of a controller, select the player you wish to report. Once selected, a new window will appear.

3.Choose the “Report Player” option.

4.Once you elect to report the player, three offenses can be chosen:

Cheating

Frequently Idle

Abusive Behavior/Language​

No confirmation of this report is sent to either the reporter or the reported player. Additionally, players can only be reported once per session, and attempting to do so again will result in the Report Player option unavailable.

How we follow-up with Reporting

Reports will be stored, tracked, and we will evaluate them for response on a regular basis. Our policy is not to go into specifics about when or what disciplinary actions have been taken, so if you report players, you won’t receive any direct indication anything has happened. Once a player is reported, any following communication or disciplinary action, if applicable, is a private matter between that individual and us.

What we do with those reports depends on the types of reports we receive. Severe abuses – like cheating or personal threats – will often result in permanent bans of your Battleborn account, as they are violations of the terms of service you agree to when you play Battleborn. Other abusive behaviors may receive lighter penalties, such as warnings or temporary bans.

Again, our policy is not to go into specifics about individual punishments, but we will issue them at regular intervals, as needed. As the Battleborn community evolves, so will our policies and methods for fostering a positive gameplay experience.

Thank you all in advance for being a good citizen of the Battleborn community. The Reporting tool is a start of several things underway to help you communicate to us in ways that make the community better for all. Be good. Play Great.